Donat Rétif was installed as chief executive of loveholidays in December 2019 a year-and-a-half after the fast-growing OTA was sold to private equity investor Livingbridge.

Prior to taking on the role, Rétif was chief executive or MeteoGroup, a firm that provides accurate weather forecasts to governments, companies and millions of customers, and for eight years before that he was chief executive of Truvo Group.

During his time at Truvo, Rétif oversaw operations in seven countries building out the firm’s local search and advertising business in key markets with a particular focus on new media.

Prior to the pandemic, loveholidays was one of the UK’s fastest-growing OTAs, based on its propriety technology that enables an open search capability, having switched from being a re-seller of operator packages in 2012. Today it is the UK’s fourth largest Atol holder.

Speaker:

Donat Rétif, Chief Executive, loveholidays

If the COVID pandemic taught us anything, it’s that having the ability to offer customers flexible and adaptable booking and payments terms is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ but an essential aspect to doing business in the travel industry.

While great news for consumers, the travel sector is facing fundamental changes in the way credit lines are agreed and how cash flows through the sector. What are the opportunities for firms to embrace a revolution taking place in fintech to protect their businesses and to rebuild trust with customers?

Setting the scene for this session, Modulr will reveal findings of exclusive research they have conducted on consumer attitudes in Europe about booking and payments experiences in the travel sector and how these have been impacted by the COVID pandemic.

Speakers:

Will Plummer, Chief Executive, Trust My Group

Kuba Zmuda, Chief Strategy Officer, Modulr

Roberto Da Re, Founder, Travel Ledger

Jay Abbott, Vice President Travel and Mobility, Digital Payments, Nuvei

The tendency in travel selling is to add more content, more product and use more engagement triggers such as vouchers or sign-ups.

At the same time, it’s almost a platitude that choice can be overwhelming and the more evident a decision is, the more likely a user will convert.

In this session, Bd4travel shares insights on the practical application of Artificial Intelligence-driven one-to-one personalisation that make things easier for your customers by showing less, not more.

Find out how to make more money by being intelligent about how you put specific product and offerings in front of the right person.

Speaker:

Andy Owen-Jones, Chief Executive, bd4travel

A Recovery Powered by People

Antonio Fellino was confirmed as Managing Director of OTA Travel Republic in October 2021 following a six-month period in which he was acting as interim boss.

The appointment saw him relocate to the UK from Dubai where he was based for eight years working in various leadership roles for Travel Republic owner dnata Travel, part of the Emirates Group.

He joined dnata from Thomas Cook in 2014, having spent five years at the tour operator as head of e-commerce. As vice president of B2C e-commerce and retail between 2016-2019, Fellino led the digital transformation of dnata Travel leisure in the United Aarab Emirates.

Travel Republic is one of the leading UK independent OTAs having risen to prominence thanks to its market leading dynamic packaging technology. Today, it is among the UK’s top 20 Atol holders, licenced to carry 116,500 customers a year.

Speaker:

Antonio Fellino, Managing Director, Travel Republic

One of the biggest challenges for all travel companies is the lack of frequency with which they talk to customers who may be in the market for a holiday only once a year.

However, travel and holidays have affiliations with many areas of people’s everyday lives that provide potential opportunities to engage regularly and personally with customers while not overtly selling to them.

This session looks at one of those areas and how sound and travel are inextricably linked. How can travel brands that understand this benefit from engaging with clients?

How can they drive loyalty from helping them discover new tunes and artists and curate the soundtrack of their trips? What role does sound play in marketing campaigns?

Speakers:

Chris Roe, Director, Sound Travel

Manuel Hilty, Chief Executive, Nezasa

Jo McCrostie, Creative Director, Global Radio

James Clarke, UK General Manager, Travelzoo

Lights, Camera, Engagement: Ditch vanilla video content for the social age

Over 85% of the internet traffic is now video and all the social media platforms are pushing video first because engagement, consideration to booking, view time considerably increases using video content.

With the increasing use of video for decision making, an explosion of formats across the marketing channels and useful personalisation of content critical in engaging large and niche audiences, why do so many brands produce such small volumes of vanilla video content, out of format and not tailored specifically to consumers looking for specific experiences?

In this session Travlrr’s Darren Khan will explain how using data, measurement, and sustainable remote local teams can help brands connect more effectively and more frequently with their consumers to drive better results.

APIs (Application Programme Interfaces) are nothing new, but the technology is exploding in the travel and hospitality sector opening up the potential for product distribution to a broader base of third parties.

At the same time suppliers are using the platforms that are emerging on top of this technology to innovate the way they retail to their customers either direct or through trade partners.

In this session we ask what this means for the future of the travel, hospitality and tourism industry as it strives to bounce back from the pandemic. Are we entering a new era of innovation and is this fundamental change or just a changing of the guard?

Speakers:

Charlie Cowley, Co-Founder, Impala

Noel Gibbs, Director of Sales, Europe and Australia, Dida Travel

Paul Anthony, Digital Commercialisation Director, Hotelbeds

Alice Ferrari, Chief Executive, Kyte

This year, for the first time, the Travolution Summit is putting time aside during the conference to bring technology and digital services supplier face-to-face with prospective new clients in pre-arranged hosted meetings.

During this period after lunch delegates who have registered to attend meetings at pre-arranged times will have short one-to-ones with the companies they have chosen to sit down with at the Summit.

Trending Travel launched in 2020 as a Tour Operator with a twist. They harness the power of social media by turning likes, follows and engagement into holiday bookings by collaborating with influencers, celebrities and content creators.

Social media is a trillion-pound industry and with over 300k followers they are one of Europe's most-followed travel companies on Instagram and TikTok.

Trending Travel wanted an off the shelf reservation platform and chose intuitive’s iVector to provide them with a full, end-to-end tour operating system that could run and automate all of their travel operations.

They needed to be able to easily access product and work with their suppliers however they or their suppliers wanted.

With instant search capabilities, it will allow their customers to seamlessly transition from the social media platforms to a booking tool for them to search and find their dream holiday.

This session will explore how influencer marketing and travel tech have come together to turn the power of social media into bookings.

Speakers:

Andy Keeley, Commercial Director, intuitive

Keith Herman, Chief Executive Officer, Trending Travel

The Netflix generation has become accustomed to digital services that can be switched on and off on demand and do not require onerous upfront hardware or systems integration costs or ongoing support.

In travel this model is starting to gain traction both in the B2C sector and B2B where cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and open APIs are revolutionising travel tech and supporting new entrants and business models.

This session will hear from consumer-facing brands and tech and digital payments suppliers that are pioneering this more flexible subscription-based approach to doing business and moving the industry away from outdated and cumbersome legacy systems.

Speakers:

Stuart Cotterell, Chief Technology Officer, Traveltek

Jae Hopkins, Non-Executive Director, Ultimate Travel Club

Tony Wheble, Chief Executive, Feefo

Harnessing Digital Disruption

Zoe Harris joined Manchester-based OTA On The Beach as Chief Marketing Officer in January 2021 having joined from comparison site GoCompare where she headed up marketing and was chief executive of Look After My Bills autoswitching.

Her career started in travel with Airtours where she worked as brand manager for its Escapades 18-30 brand. Her career then took her into the media and strategy and digital transformation roles at The Guardian, ITV, NBC, Hearst, WCRS and Trinity Mirror.

Harris’ return to travel saw her join a firm that has won many accolades for its marketing both online and on more traditional channels like TV.

In just over two decades On The Beach grew from a tiny operation run from a spare room to one of the UK’s biggest and most innovative travel companies sitting third on the list of Atol holders in terms of licenced passengers behind Tui and Jet2holidays.

Speaker:

Zoe Harris, Chief Customer Officer, On The Beach

Speakers:

Rebecca Crook, Chief Growth Officer, Somo

Reinvigorating travel: Giving customers what they want…

Why the industry needs to do more In this session, Somo’s Rebecca Crook takes her digital transformation experience, combined with her love of travel, to shed light on how the travel industry is under performing digitally in meeting customer needs. She will examine how digital disrupters from outside of the travel sector have created new standards of customer experience and expectations, and what travel brands can do to keep up with this accelerated change.